Social Retargeting & Email Conversions

Imperative Actions

We’ve covered the first two in our Top 10 Homeschool Marketing Practices: Email Acquisition Strategies and Awareness Sequences. Today we are going to look at the next two practices: Social Retargeting Schedule and Email Conversion Approach.

Social Retargeting Schedule

Before we begin, I want to define social retargeting and explain why it’s used in multiple instances. First, social retargeting is all about reaching potential conversions in two scenarios: when subscribers have unsubscribed or, towards the end of the season, when subscribers have not opened emails or did not convert.

Subscribers Who Unsubscribe

It can be a little disheartening when the subscriber unsubscribes. Some unsubscribe on the first email, some after 10 years. The reasoning varies and we’ll talk about limiting your unsubscribes by having a smart email conversion approach. But for now, I want to focus on dealing with the inevitable: as your list grows, so will your unsubscribes.

You don’t want to spend ad dollars on active subscribers because you already have a means of communicating with them. Instead, since you’ve created an asset to acquire an email that tells you the subscriber is a good fit for your products, if and when they unsubscribe, you’ll want a secondary plan of action to retarget them, and social media is the place to do that.

You’ve heard me say it once and I’ll say it again: a great email service provider, like Converkit, is amazing at helping you segment your unsubscribes! Any tagging you’ve done before or even after they unsubscribed can be used to export lists to use in social retargeting.

Since homeschooling is an industry that has a fixed season, during off season and at the beginning of the season you’ll want to stay on the radar of potential customers by running ads that are informational, driving traffic to your website. Towards the end of the season, you’ll want to shift to more hard sales ads while also working to target those who have not opened emails or converted.

Subscribers Who Are Cold or Have Not Converted

Here’s the brilliance of ConvertKit! You can use a simple API and connect your shopping cart to your email service provider and track specific emails to sales.

For example, let’s say that Sally, a homeschool mom, downloads your offer, then unsubscribes 5 weeks later. During those five weeks, though, she purchased your services or product. In this case, you don’t want to spend ad dollars trying to reach her on social media (at least not until next year!).

Instead, you can create custom segmented lists of specific emails that have unsubscribed and have not purchased. Again, not wasting any of your ad dollars. The same is true of what I call cold subscribers. These have not opened an email in the past 30+ days, but they also haven’t unsubscribed.

Bonus Tip: Speaking of retargeting, in September of each year, I do a deep dive into the data and pull lists of subscribers who have not converted but have opened emails and clicked on specific products or links.

First I begin by sending special emails with incredible offers. If I don’t get traction there, I’ll spend my remaining ad budget the last 2 weeks of September on social ads, giving the nudge or oftentimes the reminder to purchase. Being strategic saves ads dollars and maximizes my acquired email efforts.

Speaking of ad dollars, for all social retargeting, this is where I use the remaining 20% of my ad budget.

We’ve covered what to do with unsubscribes year round, as well as subscribers who have not converted or cold subscribers at the end of the season, but what about subscribers during off season and on season? That’s where the email conversion approach comes into play.

If you need help with your marketing goals, feel free to reach out to Shawn at 716.867.6600 or shawno@hedua.com.

Email Conversion Approach

An email conversion approach is a well thought out, year-long strategy of sending emails to your subscriber list.

I often watch brands only utilize emails for hard sales, and this is a mistake. A smart email conversion approach not only converts more sales, but it also helps limit unsubscribes, keeping your open rates high. (That means you’re connecting!)

Depending on your brand, each approach will be different. However, there are key elements that all approaches should contain:

Educate and inform
Overcoming obstacles, soft selling
Products in use and customer testimonials
Hard selling
Specials, deals, and flash sales

Educate and Inform

We often take for granted, especially because we think about our brand at least forty hours a week, that a subscriber is on the same page as we are. But that’s rarely true. A homeschool mom is busy juggling multiple kids, assignments, dinners, grocery shopping, laundry, and about 400 more items each day.

It’s imperative to remember how busy she is and to remind her of your brand with educational and informative emails. These don’t have to be dry or boring, in fact, the more you can relate to her life, the more connection you can form. Depending on the complexities of your brand, you’ll want to make sure you include at least 2 educational or informational emails each month.

Overcoming Obstacles, Soft Selling

I spend a good 50% of my email conversion approach determining the obstacles a homeschool mom has to my products and then using emails to overcome each one. The thing I love most about this approach is the connection I can make with a homeschool mom because I’m identifying what she may not even realize she is thinking. Then I can help her see the solution in my product.

The copy written to identify and overcome obstacles is often too long to send in one email. I send a minimum of 2, but sometimes as many as 3 to cover the topic completely.

Products in Use and Customer Testimonials

At least once a month you should be sharing your products in use with customer testimonials. Remember, nearly all homeschool purchases are influenced by other homeschoolers. These emails can be an effective piece of the puzzle to conversion. This is also where your emails should be an invitation to join you on social media. (Yes, use your email list to grow your social followers!).

Hard Selling

When putting together your calendar of emails over the weeks, months, quarters, and even a year (my favorite plan is always the year long one!), it’s important to send the hard selling emails 1-2 times a month. Hard selling is just that – laying out the products, the price, and the “buy now” button. By doing the work of sending the informational emails, overcoming obstacles content, and customer testimonials, you’re setting up the hard sell email. Keep that in mind as you develop this email, making sure you go back to previous emails and review to make sure they have prepared the subscriber to convert.

Specials, Deals, and Flash Sales

Some brands have the product line to offer limited time offers and specials. When it comes to these types of emails, you’ll want to begin training your subscribers to expect a special. For example, Friday Flash Sale or Tuesday Two for One, etc. By being consistent with emails that contain deals, you’ll be amazed how many subscribers will begin to look forward to hearing from you.

Advanced Email Conversion Approach

There is another aspect of email conversion approach, but it’s not emails that go to your entire list. Instead, you can combine tagging subscribers who click on the emails listed above, rules to learn the interest level of a subscriber, and then finally automations to deploy special sequences to convert.

For example, using the history curriculum brand, a subscriber – we’ll use Sally again – has opened every email about the elementary products. Plus, she has clicked on the 2nd grade set.

You can automate a tagging system that indicates she has clicked. Over the course of time, especially since homeschooling is seasonal, Sally has clicked a second and third time. By using automation, you can move Sally from first interest, to second, and finally to third. Three different times Sally has clicked on a specific product, but you know she hasn’t purchased. Once she has shown interest the third time, your automation is set to deploy a special sequence to drive home the conversion. This is often three emails over five days focusing very strongly on that specific product.

This is an advanced level conversion approach, and currently the only email service provider I have seen with this capability is ConvertKit. (Can you tell I LOVE this company?)

We’ve covered a lot of ground today, and there’s a lot more to go over. But in the meantime, if you need help with your marketing goals, feel free to reach out to Shawn at 716.867.6600 or shawno@hedua.com.

What To Do Next

Now for your challenge! After reading through the details, it can seem a bit overwhelming to think about creating a year-long email strategy along with social retargeting. Instead of biting off more than you can chew, start with the following steps:

Decide how many of each email above you will send in a month. Start with a conservative number, and as you grow in your mastery of sending emails, you can increase.
Based on #1, pull out a calendar and plan for 3 months. Include the email type and the focus. (Going beyond 1 month helps you see how much content, products, or services you have to fill your calendar, helping you decide if the number you decided in #1 is too much or not enough.)
Determine a timeframe, such as monthly or quarterly, to export unsubscribes to retarget on social; add this to the calendar as well.

As we finish up the third and fourth marketing practice, I want to encourage you that each step is a learning process. Give yourself the space to learn, adjust, change, and redo. Take one day at a time, focusing on the most important need your brand has.

In a few days I’ll connect with you as we talk about the place you are sending all these subscribers to, your website!